Terms of Surrender Read online

  “Hi?” There was a questioning inflection to the greeting by a female’s voice. Angie pivoted sharply, alarm showing briefly, then disappearing when she saw the slender brunette in the doorway. “Were you looking for Miss Graves?”

  “Miss Graves?” The name meant nothing to Angie, and for an instant, she couldn’t understand why the young woman thought she would be looking for that person.

  “Yes. Miss Graves teaches the first grade class.” The explanation was accompanied by a curious study of Angie. “I thought since you were in her room that you must be looking for her.”

  “No, I...” Angie paused and began to move slowly toward the doorway where the woman stood. She was only a few years older than Angie. “I used to live here years ago.” She fell back on the explanation she had given the secretary in the principal’s office.

  There was an instant smile of understanding. “Revisiting some of your childhood stomping grounds, huh?” the brunette guessed.

  “Yes, you could say that,” Angie agreed.

  “I’m Mrs. Lucy Gonzales, in charge of the second graders.” The young woman introduced herself.

  “I’m Angie . . . Smith,” she faltered, almost forgetting the false surname she’d previously given, even though no one here was likely to remember an Angie Hall.

  “Are you visiting relatives?” The young teacher wasn’t trying to probe, merely expressing a friendly interest.

  Blond hair brushed her shoulders at the negative shake of her head. “No. I’m on vacation and just happened to pass through town.”

  “Where do you live now?”

  “The company I work for just transferred me from their Phoenix office to Houston seven months ago.” Which was her first, entirely truthful answer.

  “What’s the company—if you don’t mind me asking?” the brunette tacked on the qualification as if realizing she might sound nosy.

  “No. It’s an electronics firm called Data-Corp.” It was almost a relief to talk about her work, a totally unemotional subject.

  “Electronics.” Her dark eyes widened expressively, as if indicating it was out of her league. “That’s a growing field.”

  “It’s very challenging work,” Angie replied. “And the pay is good, as well as the benefits. I was fortunate to be hired by them straight out of college.”

  “An Arizona university?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “I majored in mathematical science at the University of Arizona.”

  “Then is this your first trip back since you and your parents moved away?” the teacher inquired. Together, they moved out of the doorway into the roomier space of the hall.

  “More or less,” Angie hedged on her answer. “My parents were killed in a bus crash in Brazil when I was sixteen. They had gone there on a kind of second honeymoon. After that, I was shuffled back and forth among my relatives until I started college.”

  “That must have been rough,” Lucy Gonzales offered sympathetically.

  “Yes, well... I made it,” she declared on an indrawn breath and glanced back to the open door of the classroom, but she didn’t mention the pain and heartache she’d had to endure alone.

  “Have you looked up any of your old school friends?” The teacher attempted to change the subject to one she thought would have more pleasant memories.

  “Not really—no. Most of them have probably moved away. About the only name I still recognize is Blackwood, but the family has been a permanent part of this area almost as long as ’Big Tree’.” Angie referred to the live oak tree at Goose Island State Park, reputed to be two thousand years old.

  “It does seem the Blackwood family has been around that long,” the young teacher agreed with a laugh. “It’s going to continue, too. The heir to the Blackwood holdings is in my class of second graders.”

  The color drained from Angie’s face. She felt her knees grow weak as the statement nearly ripped her apart, but the brunette seemed unaware of the impact of her words.

  “I guess I should properly refer to Lindy as an heiress,” Lucy Gonzales corrected her previous terminology.

  “A girl? Her father is Deke Blackwood?” The inflection of her almost frozen voice made it a question, seeking confirmation.

  “Yes—” The teacher planned to say more but she was interrupted by the shrilly loud clammer of a bell ringing overhead. She waited until it had stopped ringing to explain to Angie, “That’s the first bell Classes resume in three minutes. The stampede will start any second now,” she declared in half-jest. But it seemed almost a cue to Angie, because within seconds after the young teacher’s remark there was a sound of running feet entering the building.

  “Mrs, Gonzales! Mrs. Gonzales!” The excited voice of a child called to the teacher.

  As Angie started to turn, glimpsing a tow-headed child out of the corner of her eye, the teacher murmured an aside to her, “That’s Lindy Blackwood.”

  For a full minute, Angie could only stare at the child who rushed up to the teacher. A terrible pain was wrenching at her heart and lungs, making it difficult to think or breathe. The little girl’s hair was the color and texture of cornsilk, secured by gold barrettes on either side. Her build was very slender and petite, but there was a healthy glow to her complexion. It was the child’s eyes, however, that trapped Angie—Deke’s eyes—so clear and gray, fringed with soot-black lashes.

  “Look what I found, Mrs. Gonzales!” Lindy Blackwood uncurled her fingers from around the object clutched in her hand to show it to her teacher. “It’s a fossil rock,” she declared, proud of her knowledge.

  “So it is,” Lucy Gonzales agreed after looking at it.

  “I found it all by accident. Wasn’t I lucky?” the little girl beamed.

  “You certainly were.”

  Angie’s taut muscles loosened enough to allow her to crouch down to the little girl’s height. “May I see it, Lindy?” There was a forced lightness to her question.

  The girl was proud to show off her find. Angie’s fingers trembled as she examined the rock with the fossilized imprint of a leaf that was cradled in the small palm. Angie schooled her expression not to show any of her inner torment when she looked into the gray eyes that so reminded her of Deke.

  “That’s really something,” Angie murmured in feigned admiration for the rock.

  The tow-headed child agreed with a vigorous nod, then cocked her head to one side. “How did you know my name?”

  “Your teacher told me,” Angie explained, rent with anguish and fighting to conceal it.

  “Are you a teacher?” The young girl studied Angie with unblinking interest.

  “No. I’m just visiting the school.” She couldn’t meet the directness of that gaze and let her own slide to the rock. “How did you know this was a fossil rock?”

  “Because my daddy has one on his desk—only it’s bigger and has a scorpion in it instead of a leaf. I’d rather have a leaf,” she stated, quite emphatically.

  Angie clasped her hands tightly together, struggling to maintain control of her expression. She’d been with Deke when he’d found the rock with the skeletal outline of a scorpion. They’d been out on Mustang Island, looking for sand dollars along the beach—Angie abruptly shut off the memory.

  “I like the leaf, too.” Her voice was slightly choked, and husky.

  The noisy bell sounded again.

  “The one-minute warning bell,” Lucy Gonzales grimaced.

  “I’d better go,” Lindy Blackwood sighed, then smiled widely at Angie. “It was nice meeting you.” Her mouth went tight as a furrow of concentration puckered her forehead. “I forgot your name. Did you tell me?” she questioned, then smiled ruefully. “Daddy says it’s a bad habit to forget people’s names, but sometimes a person can’t help it,” she insisted with pseudo-adultness.

  “My name is . . . Angie,” she supplied only her given name as Angie became aware of the tide of children flooding the hall.

  “’Bye, Angie.” The blond-haired girl was quickly engulfed by her class
mates and swept into the second grade classroom.

  Angie didn’t have an opportunity to respond to the wave from Lindy’s teacher, busy shepherding her pupils into the room with some degree of orderliness. Angie stared at the point where she’d last seen the child until the final bell rang. Then she moved numbly to the exit, and out the door to her car.

  Before she had driven two blocks, her vision became clouded with tears. Angie realized she should never have come to Rockport. It was worse now than before. Ignorance had been better than knowing. She began trembling, shaking from the brutal pain that had become worse instead of better.

  A horn blared and brakes squealed. She swerved the car just in time to avoid hitting another. Considering her state of mind, she wasn’t fit to be on the road. She pulled into the first motel she found. It wasn’t until then that Angie realized she had backtracked. She was only a few blocks away from the very intersection where her journey into the past had begun.

  Taking deep, shuddering breaths, she sat behind the wheel for several minutes, then made a half-hearted attempt to wipe the moisture from her cheeks. The face in the rear-view mirror looked drained and exhausted, which was precisely the way she felt.

  Finally Angie climbed out of the car and walked on shaky legs to the door marked “Office.” A bell jingled above the doorway when she entered. An elderly man appeared in the opening to a back room and walked to the reception counter.

  “I’d like a room, please.” There was a definite waver in her voice, revealing the thin edge of her poise.

  “Single or double?” the dour-faced man asked.

  “Single.”

  “How many nights?” He pushed a registration form across the counter for Angie to fill out.

  “One.” But even as she said it, Angie doubted that she would leave. Not right away. The situation was so impossible. She couldn’t leave and she couldn’t stay. Why hadn’t she left things the way they were? It had been bearable. But not now.

  Her hand was trembling. She had to grip the cheap ballpoint pen hard in order to make her name a legible scrawl. With a strange vagueness, she saw that she had written “Angie Smith” instead of “Hall.” Why the subterfuge? What was she hoping to gain? Perhaps time to come to her senses? To use the strong, logical sense of her mind, instead of being controlled by her emotions.

  “Will this be cash or credit card?” the elderly clerk questioned.

  “Cash.” Angie opened her clutch purse to pay him. She had no choice. With a false name on the registry, it was impossible to use one of her credit cards without inviting a lot of questions about her right name, which she didn’t want to answer.

  After writing out a cash receipt, the clerk handed her a room key and gave her directions on how to find it and where to park her car. Angie was so overwrought that she only remembered half of it and ended up lugging her suitcase the length of one hallway before she found the door with a number that corresponded to the key she’d been given.

  Her interest in the clean, sparsely furnished room was nil. She left her suitcase where she’d sat it down on the floor, not bothering to set it on the luggage rack provided. She sank onto the firm mattress, not noticing the bright, cinnamon chenille bedspread covering it. Her thoughts were in turmoil. Right and wrong seemed interchangeable. The only clear delineation in her mind was between the past and the present.

  Chapter Two

  The loud, laughing voices of a family with teenagers walking past her motel room door finally roused Angie to her surroundings. Hardly any light was coming through the window, creating shadows in the room. She switched on the lamp by the bed and glanced at her watch. It was after six. There was a lost sensation that so much time had gone by without her being aware of it. The giddy weakness she felt was obviously caused by hunger. It was suddenly important to have a purpose, even if it was something as basic as eating.

  Her purse was on the bed. It took Angie a minute to find the key to the room. Considering how disoriented she had been when she arrived at her motel room, she found the small restaurant attached to the motel with surprising ease. A few patrons were already there, but Angie found a quiet table off by herself and sat down.

  Loud music from a jukebox filtered through the door that connected the restaurant to the adjoining bar. The laughter and camaraderie coming from the other side seemed alien to Angie. The world weighed so heavily on her shoulders, a cumbersome yoke of depression pulling her spirits down.

  The evening special on the restaurant’s menu was red snapper which the waitress recommended very highly. Angie ordered it. The meal was not only tasty, but the nourishment also chased away some of her leaden-ness. She felt buoyed by it, briefly lifted out of that canyon of despair when she finished her meal.

  With that purpose over, the evening stretched emptily ahead of her. It became mandatory not to think after the wasted afternoon when she had thought herself into a daze of confusion. The noise from the bar beckoned to her as Angie went to the cash register to pay for her meal. A coin-operated cigarette machine stood against the wall. Angie added another bill to the money she handed the cashier.

  “Some change for cigarettes, please,” she requested, even though she’d quit smoking more than four years ago. Tonight Angie wanted the companionship of a cigarette.

  With the package of cigarettes and a match book in her purse, Angie walked to the connecting door to the bar. Typically, the lighting inside was dim. She had to wait a couple of seconds inside the doorway to give her eyes a chance to adjust to the absence of light.

  All the inhabitants seemed to be male, an unusual mixture of cowboys and shrimpers. No one was sitting on the stools at the end of the bar. Angie made her way quietly to the last one. Her appearance didn’t go unnoticed. She received more than one interested and appraising look, but her posture and attitude didn’t invite any overtures, much to the disappointment of the lookers.

  The bartender was a dark-haired man in his late forties, his muscled bulk inclining to go to fat. There was a gruffness to his features and demeanor, but there was an extraordinary gentleness in his eyes when he paused across the counter from where Angie was seated on a tall barstool.

  “What’ll it be?” He rested his hairy hands on the counter’s edge and partially leaned his weight on it.

  If she drank any liquor, it was usually white wine. But it seemed inappropriate to order that here. “A beer. Whatever you have on tap.” She wasn’t particular about brands.

  While Angie opened the pack of cigarettes, the bartender tipped a glass under a beer tap and filled it nearly full before setting a head on it. He carried it over and rummaged behind the counter until he found a paper coaster to sit the glass on, then placed it in front of her.

  “Don’t recall seeing you in here before,” he remarked with a faint welcoming smile. “Are you from here?”

  “I used to be,” Angie admitted and tore a match out of the book before striking it and holding the flame to her cigarette. She almost coughed when she inhaled.

  “Back for a visit, huh?” the bartender surmised.

  “No.” Angie didn’t object to company, but she wasn’t interested in conversation.

  “The area has changed a lot—growing all the time. Tourists in the winter and tourists in the summer,” he observed.

  “Yes.”

  The bartender took the hint from her one-syllable replies and wandered to the other end of the bar. Angie tapped her cigarette tip in the ashtray and sipped at the cold beer. She had vowed not to think, but she kept wondering what would happen if she called Marissa and immediately shied away from the prospect. She listened to the music playing on the jukebox, not hearing the lyrics.

  One cowboy continued to show an increasing interest in her, studying her with a curiously intent look as if trying to place where he’d seen her before. A toasty brown mustache bushed and curled away from his upper lip. Dressed in Levis and a printed western shirt, he was wearing a spanking new Stetson with a decorative featherband. He stared at
Angle until he couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer and pushed out of his chair to cross the room.

  Angie noticed him when he leaned sideways against the bar facing her stool. There was a suggestion of a smile to his mouth, but the curving line disappeared into the mustache. Coolly ignoring him, she turned away. His blue eyes narrowed in thoughtful, yet confused speculation.

  “This is either going to sound like a bad line from an old movie or an old line from a bad movie,” he began, “but—don’t I know you?”

  A little chill ran down her spine. Angie glanced briefly at the cowboy again, seeing something vaguely familiar about his features. “No, I don’t think you do,” she denied even though she wasn’t sure.

  “I’m just positive we’ve met somewhere before,” he insisted with a slight shake of his head. “Do you live around here?”

  “No.” She’d put her cigarette out barely a minute ago, but she was suddenly apprehensive and reached for another.

  The snap of a metallic lighter sounded as the cowboy offered her its flame. Angie let him light her cigarette, but avoided contact with his sharp gaze.

  “I’ve done some traveling myself. Where are you from?” he asked.

  “Arizona.” She curled her hands around the beer glass, studying the smoke swirling from the cigarette between her fingers. She felt wary and on edge.

  There was a rueful grimace at her answer. “I’ve never been there.” He paused to study her profile again. “I know we’ve met before. It’s embarrassing to think I could forget those blue eyes or that naturally blond hair.” Angie didn’t respond to the implied compliment. “I never introduced myself. The name is Kelly. Kelly Reynolds.”

  His name rippled through her like a miniature shock wave. That was the name she hadn’t been able to recall earlier. It belonged to the young man Marissa had been dating that summer seven years ago. Kelly knew her. After seven years, he simply hadn’t recognized her—and she hadn’t recognized him. Angie struggled to keep her reaction from showing—to conceal that his name meant anything to her.